«No,» said Meinz after a pause. «No, I suppose not.» Then, briskly: «But after all, what does it concern us? A thousand light-years away—»
«That thousand light-years is shrinking,» said Kaltro. «The League territory is expanding, through exploration, colonization, the joining of new systems. The Ulugani empire will also expand, toward us. Our analysts estimate that in a mere two hundred years, there will be contact. You know that an interstellar civilization can’t be big merely in space; it has to be big in time, too. We have to think ahead.»
«Um-m-m—» Meinz rubbed his chin.
«My guess is that if we don’t stop Ulugan now, we won’t even have those two centuries,» said Alak. «They’re spoiling for trouble. A real war would unite their still new empire like nothing else.»
Meinz nodded. «A good point. But can you stop them? To try and then fail would be—catastrophic.»
«We can only try,» said Kaltro gravely. «I won’t hide from you that the situation is, well, precarious. But I don’t see how we can afford not to try.»
«Still… war—» Meinz twisted his mouth, as if it held a sour taste. «The ruination of planets. The killing of a billion innocent civilians to get at a few guilty leaders. The legacy of hatred. The corrosive effects of victory on the so-called victors. The Patrol has always existed to prevent war. If it instigated one—»
«Our intention,» said Kaltro, «is to stop Ulugan without starting a war.»
«How?»
«I can’t tell you that. We have to have our secrets.»
«And if you do provoke them into declaring one—?»
Alak shrugged. «That,» he said, «is the chance we have to take.»
«I warn you,» said Meinz; «if you get us into real trouble, the Council will have your personal hides.»
To that, neither of the Patrolmen replied.
Presently the administrator left. He took with him a bulky file of reports and sociodynamic calculations, and he gave no definite promises. But Kaltro nodded gravely at his agent. «He’ll agree,» he said.
«He’d better,» said Alak. «I tell you, the situation is worse than I can describe. You have to be on such a planet and feel the hate and tension building up. Like… well… It feels sticky. You want to go wash yourself.»
«Can you handle the operation?» asked Kaltro. «I’ll have to stay behind to fend off outraged citizens.»
«I can try,» said Alak. There was a bleakness on his lips.
«And look, Wing,» said Kaltro, «this is an unprecedented situation, I know. We’re acting outside the League, and you might feel free, in real emergency, to violate the Prime Directive. Don’t.»
«I know,» said Alak. «Any Patrolman who does—mnemonic erasure and cashiering from the service. No reasons or excuses accepted. It will be observed in this operation, too. Even if it costs us the war.»
He left after a while, to begin on the mountain of paper work which is the essence of a large-scale mission. Not bureaucratic red tape, but necessary organizational detail, and nothing glamorous about it. Nothing of jack-booted heroes, roaring warships, and flaming guns.
But then, the League Patrol had little to do with such matters anyway. They who would end war cannot resort to it themselves, or the injustice, butchery, and waste of it will provoke a hatred that must finally destroy them. The Patrol cultivated a wholly fictitious reputation as a terrible enemy, it cooked news releases about its battles and it maintained a number of impressive fighting ships. When sweet reasonableness failed to enforce the arbitration of the League, the Patrol used bluff; when that failed, it used bribery, blackmail, fomented revolution, any means that came to hand. But always and forever it held by the Prime Directive which was its own most closely watched secret.
Under no circumstances whatsoever may the Patrol or any unit thereof kill an intelligent being.
A thousand warships lanced through an interstellar night. In their van were the scouts, flanking them were the cruisers, riding magnificently at their center were the monstrous dreadnoughts each of which could annihilate all life on an ordinary-sized planet. They convoyed another thousand noncombatant vessels—transports, supply craft, flying workshops. Behind them lay the stars of the League, lost in a cold glory of constellations; before them were the swelling suns of the loose cluster holding Ulugan.
The task force found the particular star it was looking for, a yellow dwarf some ten light-years from Tumu—which is simply the Unzuvani word for «sun»—and took up an orbit around the clouded second planet. Scouts dropping down through the atmosphere used infrared scopes to see through the mists and the hot, spilling rains; geosonic probes tested a thousand kilometers of swamp and jungle and sullen tideless ocean before reporting a stable surface. Then the big workships began landing.
Wing Alak stood in the phosphorescent twilight of the sixth day looking at the labor that went on around him. Blasters had driven back the jungle, exposing a raw red scar. Now, under the white glare of floodlights, robotracs moved ponderously back and forth, laying the foundations of a landing field. He could not see through the dimness and the acrid mists to the prefab barracks which housed his workers.
The planet was humanly habitable—just barely. Alak’s clothes hung wetly around him and he cursed in a tired voice and wished it weren’t too humid for him to sweat. The ceaseless thin buzz of the sanitator about his neck, destroying air-borne molds and bacteria that would otherwise soon have destroyed him, was in a fair way to driving him crazy. And to think, he reflected in one corner of his soggy brain, I could have been a food factory technician at home.
The scaly, tentacled Sarrushian Patrolmen who made up most of his gang sloshed happily through the muck. This hellhole was almost like their own planet. Not quite—there were some dangerous animals around, you could hear them stamping and roaring out in the fever-mists. And a weird sort of tree that shot poisoned thorns had killed two of his men already.
Won’t those stupid Ulugani ever catch on?
It was no coincidence that the message should have come just then, for Alak had had few other thoughts since he first landed. The lean, beak-faced Karkarian who was his chief aide came from the communications shack and saluted, awkward in the space armor which was necessary for him here. His voder spoke tonelessly: «Subspace call, sir. From Tumu.»
«Oh, good!» Alak felt too miserable to do more than nod, but he followed the tall metallic shape with a tinge of energy. It began to rain, and he was soaked before he reached the shack. Not a very dignified spectacle for the eyes of the Ulugani in the screen.
He sat down and ran a hand through his fiery hair. That face—yes, by the First Cause, it was General Sevulan of Hurulta’s personal staff; he’d met him a few times. Mustering all his cheerfulness, he said: «Hello.» That was an insult in itself.
«Are you in charge of this expedition?» snapped Sevulan.
«More or less,» said Alak.
«I demand an immediate and official explanation,» said the Ulugani. «A scout ship noticed radiations and investigated. You fired on it, though it got away—»
«Too bad,» said Alak, though the fire had missed by his orders.
«That is an act of war in itself,» rapped Sevulan.
«Not at all,» said Alak. «This is a military reservation. Your scout probed in despite radioed orders to stop.»
«But you are building a military base—on Garvish II!»
«That is correct. What of it?»